Is county jail large enough?

Sunday

May 19, 2013 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - In the years since San Joaquin County headed on a tack to expand the jail, crime rates in the county and booking rates at the jail have been on the decline, according to a report released last week.

Zachary K. Johnson

STOCKTON - In the years since San Joaquin County headed on a tack to expand the jail, crime rates in the county and booking rates at the jail have been on the decline, according to a report released last week.

Those trends and recommended changes to incarcerate fewer lower-risk inmates - especially while they are awaiting trial - would eliminate the need to build a larger jail, according to the preliminary assessment of the county's jail population by criminal justice expert James Austin at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

The Thursday release of the report was timed to coincide with the upcoming meeting of the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, when the elected officials will consider whether to turn down $80 million to build a new jail.

Full since it opened in 1992, the jail's population is capped by a court order that releases inmates early to prevent overcrowding. The state promised the county $80 million in 2008 to build a larger jail, but budget officials say the county can't afford to operate the jail system if it doubles in size.

The county Sheriff's Office, then and now, maintains a larger jail is needed as a crime deterrent.

"In order for us to get out from under the court cap, we're going to need the additional jail space," county Sheriff Steve Moore said. Even with the kind of efforts to reduce overcrowding recommended in the report, the jail is still not big enough. "And to have a direct impact on the crime rate - we need that jail space."

Increased crime is not the trade off for fewer incarcerations, said ACLU attorneys talking about the report.

"What we're saying is you can replace that system with a smarter and safer system," Lillian Chen said, adding that the proposed changes would do more to gauge the risk of released inmates than under the current court-cap system. "It is a problem that the jail doesn't have space to hold the people who absolutely have to be there."

About two-thirds of the population at the jail is awaiting trial, and devising a better system to screen the risk posed by some of this population, then releasing them, is one of the key changes that would eliminate the need to build a larger county jail, according to the report from Austin, the former director of the Institute on Crime, Justice and Corrections at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

A pretrial-release program for people charged with felonies but deemed low risk has been field tested and works to reduce a jail's pretrial population, Austin writes.

He also recommends expanding the jail's work-release program, including using newly legislated authority to award credit for educational and other programs instead of limiting credits to manual labor.

There are other trends reducing the needs for more jail space, Austin concludes. The county crime rate has decreased since reaching a peak in 2004, and the number of bookings into the jail peaked in 2006, according to the report.

And the jail population has declined from 2007 to 2010, though it began to rise again after AB109. Also known as realignment, it is the statewide shift of certain offenders from the state to the counties. But the increased use of sentences splitting incarceration and community supervision have blunted the impact of AB109, he writes.

Moore said there are other explanations for the reduced bookings at the jail, and the future is far from certain.

Fewer officers on the streets mean fewer bookings, he said, noting how budget cuts in Stockton have reduced the city's police force. There's no guarantee the number of AB109 offenders will taper off, he said. He also mentioned Gov. Jerry Brown recently submitted a plan to comply with a federal court order that would shift even more offenders from state prisons to counties.

The Austin report is only the latest effort to take a look at the local criminal justice system.

Moore and other officials are part of a collaboration looking at ways to adapt to AB109. It has already kickstarted a review of pre-trial services in the county.

And the need for better pre-trial assessment was also in recommendations from David Bennett, the criminal justice expert hired by the city of Stockton to help develop its Marshall Plan targeting violent crime. Bennett called the system "broken," and wrote that overcrowding at the jail undermines the threat of swift consequences for crime. He also noted that 10 percent of people are in the jail long enough to complete rehabilitative programs inside. Moore sees that statistic as another indicator more bed space is needed. And it's not just any kind of beds the jail needs. Minimum-security beds at the jail's Honor Farm are not the right place for medium- and high-security inmates, Moore said.